I don't care one way or another about DX or other 3rd party widgets. I did think it was pretty cool that Dennis appeared in the thread asking for feedback. I always like it when companies actively seek out feedback to improve their products like that. Definitely bonus points for DevExpress there.

Then a whole horde of advocates showed up, the conversation turned hostile, and the whole thing became creepy. Now when I think of DevExpress, I think of that company that aggressively hunts for feedback while sending a bunch of advocates to take over a thread as backup.

From sympathetic to creepy all in the scope of two pages of thread! Spectacular.

"If it worked correctly the great things about it would be that a developer could write business classes and get a bunch of functionality right out of the shoe. Features such as user login, user profiles/back end user management, fairly fully featured ORM class level security, visual record filtering, google like record searching, grid sorting/grouping, pivot charts, validation of input and so on (and actually quite a lot more stuff) all provided to you, the developer, nearly automatically. And if it worked correctly the idea would be that all projects from everyone using XAF would share a well tested/performant codebase, and easy or nearly automatic drop in access to many business application features."

For these and many other reasons not mentioned, we use XAF very successfully at my company. We have not experienced any of the problems that you mentioned:

"performance" - has always been very good and is easy to bypass the ORM layer for direct DB modifications when needed (very rarely)

"complete lack of work flow" - not sure what you mean here, but we have always thought the UI is very efficient and easy to use for end users. For us, being consistent in UI design is paramount, and using the framework makes this easy to accomplish for end users.

"constantly outdated/poor documentation" - I disagree with this assessment. I believe DX documentation is actually very good relative to other vendors. The biggest issue here is the online documentation always refers to the latest version of the product. You must reference the installed documentation for any specific version that you are working with.

"many other minor/major pains" - obviously can't comment on this

In my experience, XAF does work correctly out of the box for what feels like to me roughly 85 - 95% (depending on complexity) of all business apps we have built using the framework. Many of the features / functionality / benefits that you mentioned just work. And I believe the learning curve to obtain that level is actually very low. To get that last 5 - 15% of functionality into an app that you might not get right out of the box, I feel like the learning curve is pretty steep for this framework as it is a complicated tool when you start digging. But at the end of the day, it is just that, a tool. And it will only be as useful as your mastery of it. And being a tool, it is not necessarily the right one for every job.

Perhaps we can hold an Obsessive-Compulsive-Disorder contest on this thread to see just how hard the Developer Express / XAF community tries to have the final post.

...

BTW, I agree XAF is not the right tool for every job - or for anything I will design.

The worst problem with XAF is the dependency that is encumbered with it. That dependency is on the Developer Express support of XAF plus whatever else XAF requires. What then happens when your XAF solution needs migrate to the latest OS? Who knows? Third party dependencies can be avoided!

I know that Microsoft's toolset will be provided for, a migration path will exist and be viable. XAF cannot promise the same. So pay now or pay later, I know firsthand that rolling up my sleeves and using guaranteed* tools from Microsoft will always prove cheaper and better. Plus the code is right, not a one-size-fits-all-solution-hacked-into-the-shape-I-need. And I do not need to see into the future to know that XAF will have difficulties moving to Windows 8. I won't even look. I already know from experience. $.02 more for you.

I am developing a long-standing code, with XAF. Thanks to extensive documentation and examples come along a little confusing at first, went over this problem. XAF I think it is very flexible and enables rapid code development. However, it takes a while to understand what it is. I think it is a very stable environment. develop a simple, flexible and consistent releases. I developed products on the market compared to competitors with superior in XAF. I am very pleased and will continue to use. I do not think your friends are using this system by the negative articles. Developer Exress very rich in terms of documentation. Very good level of sampling. First need to understand its nature, however, going to work with XAF. If you try to improve learning, will be complex and tedious.

I am developing a long-standing code, with XAF. Thanks to extensive documentation and examples come along a little confusing at first, went over this problem. XAF I think it is very flexible and enables rapid code development. However, it takes a while to understand what it is. I think it is a very stable environment. develop a simple, flexible and consistent releases. I developed products on the market compared to competitors with superior in XAF. I am very pleased and will continue to use. I do not think your friends are using this system by the negative articles. Developer Exress very rich in terms of documentation. Very good level of sampling. First need to understand its nature, however, going to work with XAF. If you try to improve learning, will be complex and tedious.

Another way to put this is;

My experience is that it does 80%-95% of the job in 10% of the time,..

The last 5%-20% I spend 250% of my time wrestling with a framework,..

So I end up at 260% of budget instead of 100%.

This is not just XAF, but any framework that does stuff differently then .Net.

we are using this framework for 3 years now, and it is great.... yes you need time ....we made some app in 1month time, without xaf it would take us 3+ months...not all the frameworks are so extensible....i think that support is great, and docs too.... its better with every new version.

we are using this framework for 3 years now, and it is great.... yes you need time ....we made some app in 1month time, without xaf it would take us 3+ months...not all the frameworks are so extensible....i think that support is great, and docs too.... its better with every new version.

This is absolutely terrible. It is almost as if people search Google or Bing to find out is anyone likes XAF, just so they can join this forum, and add to the marketing Spam, in the hope that if someone does search (Channel 9 is ranked pretty highly by Google) that they can find a post that has some critisism, and loads of information provided by SEO people from DevExpress. It is that obvious what you are doing.

This is despicable behavior, so for every new (nameless and faceless) person that posts after never using this forum, I will make it my mission to respond with a different view. It may well be that the sys admins lock the thread.

I removed a post on my blog after the President of DevExpress contacted my to ask why I was so negative about their WPF components, so I am going to unhide it now, and I will not hesitate to give my opinion on DevExpress and their methods in the future.

XAF is rubbish (see how desperate DevExpress are acting in this post, those are the warning signs), it's an abstarction that will cause you more finiancial pain rather than reward you with productivity.

It is almost a form of censorship, whereby if someone expresses an opinion you disagree with, or a gived a bad review on a product, DevExpress use double-think.

If you attack a post that is negative with several positive posts that are from their Marketing department (come on time to fess up), then the feeling is that they have neutralised the dissent, so if a new person reads the post in a few months time, then they will think that the product is good.

This is a tact that irritates me immmensley. StackOverflow is being ruined by people like this. One of the truly pure and great knowledge sites, like Wikipedia it enriches one with how great humans can be when they come together to share knowledge. If they could, they would change the Wikipedia article for an Orange to say that the pips have XAF imprinted on them. In a few days you would have someone posting saysing "yes, it's true, orange pips do have XAF imprinted on them".

That is the snow they are selling to the Eskimaux here on Channel 9.

I wouldn't put it past them to pay a dormant 9er some money, to try an neutralise what has been said, and give them some credibility.